#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 5: On Love and Death in the House of Jia
[Originally recorded on 2-11-2023] The theme of this morning's #ReadingTheStone live chat began earlier, with Kate's Twitter poll on where readers fell on The Baoyu-Daiyu-Baochai ship, and whether Da...
11 Feb 202357min
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 11: On Goethe v. Proust, Private v. Public Reading, and Hexes
[Originally recorded on July 2, 2022] After a lovely first #ReadingTheStone (virtual) face-to-face meetup as part of the Duke APSI Book Club in late June, we returned to our Twitter Spaces live chats...
10 Feb 202355min
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 4: On Daiyu's Near Demise and Recovery, and Zen Koans
[Originally recorded on 2-4-23] #ReadingTheStone discussion centered around Chapters 91-95, though we began the conversation where we left off the previous Saturday, on Daiyu willing her own demise by...
7 Feb 20231h 3min
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 10: On Poetry in the Garden, Gaokao exam questions, and is Baoyu a F-boy?
[Originally recorded on 6-11-2022] Episode 10 saw us ranging widely, though we nominally discussed Chapters 17 to 21. First, we chatted about all the buzz over the 2022 PRC college entrance examinati...
7 Feb 20231h 1min
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 9 On Embedded Refrains and Incipient Desire in Hongloumeng
[Conversation originally recorded on 6/4/22] Our 9th week of #ReadingTheStone was lively and wide-ranging both on Twitter and during our Saturday live conversation . Now that the imperial consort's v...
1 Feb 202357min
#ReadingTheStone S1 Episode 8 On Grand Prospect Garden, and The Functions of Naming
[Conversation originally recorded on 5/28/22] Our eighth #ReadingTheStone conversation took us into the construction and naming of every nook and cranny inside Grand Prospect Garden, aka 大觀園 Daguanyua...
28 Jan 202359min
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 3: On Tragedy, Failure, and Creativity - and Daiyu, of course
In last week's episode we agreed that the last 40 "Story of the Stone" chapters were giving final season wrap-up-all-the-loose-threads vibes, but perhaps our #ReadingTheStone chats now do that too. We...
28 Jan 202355min
#ReadingTheStone S2 Episode 2: On Daiyu's Anguished Dream, and Final Season Vibes
The #ReadingTheStone community forged ahead into Chapters 81-85 today, and we encountered so many callbacks to earlier moments to the point that some of us felt that they were giving final-season wrap...
23 Jan 202346min
